Long Division
by KKGlinka
Summary: In the aftermath of Catwoman 50, Selina Kyle reclaims her birthright.


Title: Long Division  
Rating: R for graphic violence.   
Characters: Selina Kyle, Bruce Wayne, Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson, Rose Wilson, Dr Arthur Light, Pamela Isley, Eobard "Professor Zoom" Thawne , Zatanna Zatara, Superman.  
Continuity: Catwoman #50, Infinite Crisis, Omac Project, When in Rome   
Disclaimer: All characters © DC Comics.

* * *

When I was younger, I met my father, the real one who didn't pray just because he got drunk and beat the crap out of me or my sister. I couldn't decide if he was a great man who tried too little or a small man who tried too much. Within two years, I watched my younger siblings slaughter each other over his power and I realized he was a great man who knew where to draw the line and never take too much. When I was twenty two, I went to his grave and thanked him for that restraint, for denying me to his dying day, and saving my life. 

The only man who ever understood the choice I made to be less, is grumbling at me for entering his personal sanctuary uninvited and unannounced. I pad around his frightening computer, listening to the brown bats shuffle above along the stalactites. They rustle, soft and unrelenting.

"I wish you wouldn't come in here like that. You set off the grounds defenses."

"No I don't." I set off the proximity alarm because I didn't see any point in disabling it.

He sighs and I can see the video feed on the computer screen, past his chair. The Brother Eye winks a steady red and I can see various heroes battling the OMACs on the side-screens, in a sort of white-noise. A frozen image of my face with the message, 'wanted for police questioning, believed to be armed and dangerous' is on the main screen.

"You caused quite a mess."

I hear the un-spoken accusation that I could have picked a better time. "I was angry." This is the best time, I reply in equal silence.

"Sionis is dead."

"Yes." Black Mask put out a hit on Holly but almost killed Karon, her girlfriend, instead. Slam's son, Sam, a detective on the GCPD, was disguised as a b-rate villain named Smart Bomb and distracted me. Unfortunately for Black Mask, I'd dragged the police along with me and they only took one look at the gun he had pointed at Holly before making their call. "Heard they pulled thirty-seven bullets out of him."

"He got caught in the cross-fire." Mask off, Bruce is watching me narrowly, blue eyes shadowed with chronic fatigue. In another time, another place, he once said, "He tripped over his own shoe-laces." He's said that ever since in so many different words.

I nod, measured. "Bruce?"

He raises an eyebrow.

"Do you trust me?"

I can see the momentary lie cross his face before he admits, "I try."

"Why?"

He twists his head down to one side, pausing and his face tightens with suppressed pain. Everyone thinks it's anger when they see it. He hates doubt so much. "She told you."

He knows that when I don't answer, it means, 'yes' and meets my eyes through my mask. "I tried to tell you but Despero..." He lifts a hand, palm up. "And I couldn't in front of them. I waited. I gave them every chance and they looked right at you and lied by omission." His other hand is clamped around the arm-rest.

"You had ten years." Of omission. I remember when Despero, a creature that resembled the Christian devil, took his mind. Batman attacked me, without hesitation, as he never had in any of our confrontations. He tries to trust me. He tries so hard.

He looks away. "Without proof? You would have accused me of inventing reasons to mistrust you, of discrediting you. We both know that."

That he was that afraid of losing my good faith? No, we didn't both know. "Okay." I step away from his chair.

"They did it to me, too. Made me forget what I saw. I understand what you're feeling."

"No."

"Selina-"

"Is dead. She was murdered ten years ago. Forgetting was the least of it."

"_No._" He pushes out of the chair. "That's not how Zatanna's magic works, especially not then when she was a rank amateur. It's another type of brain-washing and it can't work against a person's nature. Not in the long run." He exhales loudly. "I got in the way but forgetting isn't in my nature. Being kind isn't in Dr. Light's nature. Being cruel isn't in yours."

I want to tell him he's about to trip over his shoe-lace, but he follows me, hovering right out of reach. He thinks what the Pact did was some memory trick but I remember the wriggling and crawling inside my head. Wants to think it, but he must have noticed when I changed like some golem set on a mission.

"Don't you see? Even if her spell worked the way she intended, it's still you. It's been you all along. If you're any sort of hero it's because you wanted it."

A childhood filled with being a good girl and holding still keeps my face cold and my body motionless. In the harsh fluorescent lighting of the Bat-cave, his skin is pale like an albino's. I remember another man with scars and pock-marks, breath like backed up sewage, whispering in my ear. 'C'mon baby. Quit cryin'. Don' be's this way.' He paused to wriggle inside me, 'I knows ya want it. I can feel it.' I can't remember the bits after his fist punched my head.

I propel myself out of his range, around a gurney and away from the computer station. I use the glare from the overhead lights to hide my eyes behind the goggle lenses. I remember finding a yellowed book in the rarely open library of the Lower East Side, years later and crying into the pages when I read about ingrained biological defense mechanisms. I learned the body has a funny way of protecting itself. It makes you quit fighting. It cooperates to minimize damage. Doesn't mean you want it.

Breathing hard, in and out, fight back the nausea, I shake my head at him. I know he means well. Bruce holds out his arms and I shut down the memories, walking into the embrace, because he should have trusted his instincts. For a second, I lean into the warmth of his chest, insulated by his cape. Then, I feel his hands grab my shoulders fiercely, in time to the soft hiss and pop of silence bullets and shattered knee-caps.

His face goes slack for a moment and he grunts, then moans in pain as I catch him. There are few things more painful than this, and Batman or not, he can't fight it. I lower him to the ground as well as I can manage his weight, grabbing his batarang before he can. I pin his right hand to the ground and use my body to block access to his utility belt. Though his left is free, he merely holds my thigh.

"Why?" He's breathing hard, keeping a timed rhythm, looking around the Cave, noticing that the automated defense system has not activated. His lips are white as he fights back the pain. "I'm against them. I'm on your side."

"Then you would have told me." Batman isn't on anyone's side.

He grabs around the batarang, feebled by cut muscles and tendons.

"You don't need to cross this line."

"I didn't. I'm not." I was pushed by people who needed me to pick sides. They broke the promise I made to my father.

"You can still stop this."

I smile and brush at his hair. It's already wet with cold sweat. Raising a finger to my lips, I whisper, "Don't let _them_ know that."

He grimaces as Deathstroke, his daughter, Rose, and a middle aged Italian man in a fine suit finally exit the shadows. The infamous assassin wears his trademark blue and gold, his daughter an obedient clone, though she's staring at me with rapt fascination. The Italian comes to position at my right, two steps behind.

I kiss him on the forehead and stand, nodding at Deathstroke. He only gives me the barest moment to clear the the area before Bruce's head disappears in a vapor of blood and bone fragments. Next thing I know, I'm sitting in the computer chair, looking at the reflected outline of a headless Batman, blood a dark negative spilling across the screen.

"You aren't gonna freak out on me, are you?"

I pull off my clawed gloves to cover they way my hands shake, fingering the new ring I wear. "No. I've been through worse." I punch out the news-feed from the main screen, activate my security windows and pull up his banking records. It doesn't take long before anything solvent is frittering away to dozens of hidden accounts. For a moment, I think about WayneCorp and how it salaries thousands of employees in Gotham City alone. Then, I key in a search for Flash, tracking his motion, transmitting this information. It doesn't take long.

On a side-screen, an alert flashes and an apartment interior appears. The computer insists, 'proximity alert: Zoom' and now I can see the crib holding two infants. There is a yellow blur through the screen, almost like a camera glitch, but it leaves behind a red room.There is another blur, red this time, but it stops to become Flash. It doesn't look like he's going to keep moving.

I finish key-stroking a command sequence.

"You got the rest of mine?"

"It's done."

The computer flashes a large stylized eye at us and interrupts. "Status of Creator. Report: status of Creator."

"Creator is malfunctioning, asshole." Why does it care?

"Dead," corrects Brother Eye, another of Batman's secrets. I learned about this one recently, and not from Zatanna, but by watching the news. Bodies are turning up everywhere, maimed, dismembered, the opaque blue armor disappearing as rescue workers arrive. The death toll lags behind the casualties. We won't have long, now that Brother has identified us as a threat. The lights flicker throughout the Cave.

"I believe this is my role," drawls a refined voice. A middle-aged man dressed in black and white, complete with ridged helmet and white cape, strolls up to the computer console.

I stand up, allowing Dr. Light unencumbered access. I almost took too long with Bruce.

Dr. Arthur Light commands all forms of light which, being a waveform, can be transmitted as both energy and information near instantaneously. He grasps the metal frame of the computer and Brother Eye scans him instantly. Light jerks a bit and hisses with pain as the computer attacks with a powerful electric shock. "Stubborn little prick, aren't you?" The blue arcs bend toward him as he absorbs the energy. "Newsflash, tin-bits. You can't stop light."

"Error," complains Brother Eye.

It won't be long now before this monstrosity commandeers the non-metas in this room, being Slade, Rose and me, and changes us into OMACs. Dr. Light bends his head down, closing his eyes, baring his teeth. This computer has one of the most powerful transmitters in the world and is connected to a global satellite network, all connected by a web of electromagnetic energy. The fluorescent lights pop out, one by one, the computer whines and before the screens dim completely, I can see OMACs dropping like flies.

Access codes and passwords are irrelevant against light-speed. Which each desperate electric shock Brother Eye sends through the mainframe, Light grows stronger, trapping them in the cycle until I can smell burnt rubber and plastic. He steps back, barely visible in a phosphorescent glow previously absent from the Cave. I clasp my hands tightly behind my back until I see several monitors power up again.

"My. That was quite a show." Poison Ivy slithers into the room on an indeterminate vine. She pauses over the mangled body of Batman and claps her hands together. "Why, Selina, I never thought you had it in you."

"He won't interfere anymore."

"No, I don't suppose he will." She brushes errant leaves from her very orange hair.

In some ways, Ivy is less interested in world domination and more in nesting, if that can make a perverse sense. There will be no more Batman to save Joker from the police. The next time he commits a crime, the next time he's surrounded, he'll be Black Mask all over again. "Harley's all yours."

"In which case, this one's yours." Ivy presents a vine-wrapped Zatanna to my feet.

The magician is furious but relatively quiet, an artfully place ball-gag in her mouth, preventing anything more than a wretched growl. I crouch down, steepling my hands loosely in front of my face. "Because of you, I've got ten years to make up for. I think I'll do it all at once."

She turns her head sharply to one side, eyes pointed in a scowl towards Ivy's point of exit. Zatanna snarls around the gag.

"Oh, that. Does it bother you I used Harley as a prize?"

She glares at me.

"Then why did you brainwash _me_?" I tap the bright red ball. "Why me instead of Joker, Two-Face or one of the crazies?" I grab her hair, twisting until I can see tears. "How did that benefit Bruce? Huh?"

She's trying to shake her head. I yank her ears and she mewls. "If I could, I would rape you, so you would _understand_, but I can't." She narrows her eyes and I smile thinly. "So he's going to do it for me."

Her eyes fly open. In my peripheral vision, I see Dr. Light wave coyly at her. Her gaze snaps back to me, then back at him until her head is shaking in denial. I can see her shoulders tremble, blue eyes wide as she settles on staring into mine. Her brow is knotted and she pauses, then shakes her head minutely again.

I stand, kicking her over onto her stomach. "Get his cuffs," I nod at the corpse.

"Already got them, my dear." Light makes his way casually to Zatanna, genuflecting to hand-cuff her wrists behind her back. "It's nice to know that you make all your payments in a timely fashion." He begins peeling off the olive green vines.

"Use the antechamber over there." He tracks my finger toward a vault. "It locks from the inside. Might be some clutter in there, but it should do."

"You don't want to watch?"

"I don't want to hear." He chuckles and I watch him drag Zatanna across the filthy, ragged cave floor, his cape a gray smudge in the darkness. "And don't take off the gag."

"For shame, Selina. I'm more intelligent than that. Besides," he salutes me jauntily, "as the vernacular goes, two out of three ain't bad."

As I watch him lock the vault door, I see Marco raise his gun and reflexively hold up a hand to order it down. This is the first time in my life I've had a servant like this, who obeys because of my name instead of my money. They came crawling out like roaches once I found the first domino, Dr. Giacomo Orazio Marzullo, the Roman's personal physician. Because the Mob avoided official channels, he had became a keeper of secrets. When I walked through his decaying bric-a-brac store, removed my broad-brimmed hat, he gasped in an old man's rasp.

"Mio dio." Eyes dilated, he scoured my face. "_Dio._ If I believed in ghosts..."

"You knew my mother."

His visage was lined by years of anxiety, living without Family protection. "Perhaps."

"You saw the photo he kept on his bed-side table, didn't you, Giacomo?"

The creases don't move, so I put my hands on the counter. His eyes glance over the ring, snap back and he leaned forward until his nose almost touched my hand. He looked up at me and exhaled. "That ring disappeared many years ago, along with that photo."

"Yes." Age aside, Marzullo was intelligent enough to stay quiet. We both knew who took that photo.

He crossed himself as if the ring were more than a collection of colored rocks set in a filigreed band of yellow metal. I could see something bright in his eyes. "For a long time, there has been the bat-family," he offers.

I nodded. "Take my blood."

After that, time passed quickly. He read from a computer print-out, the paper quivering, his lips moving hesitantly. He was old enough to recall what the Roman ordered his men to forget: that his firstborn was a dark-haired girl. Perhaps he didn't need the print-out, but the others would. "You have your mother's face and your father's bearing, signora."

He gave me his son, Marco. It's almost like having a family.

I don't need to turn around. It didn't escape my notice that Deathstroke never left after I paid him, though he crept into the darkness.

"You understand, it's just business," he reassures me.

"Sure." I wonder if he notices how mild my tone is. I hear the soft _thwip_ and his grunt before I turn to face him. "That's business, right?"

Deathstroke falls to his knees, looking at his palm, head cocked to one side. "Ro'?" He sways.

"I'm sorry, daddy. You wouldn't have let me have him. You'd have killed him." Rose pulls off her mask to wipe tears from her face. "_I'm sorry._"

Attempting to crane his head to see better, Slade keels over on his side, coughing up a bloody froth. "Aw, honey... You think she... she..." He points at Bruce.

"I know. I'm not stupid." She waves the gun briefly at me.

"Ro'... you gotta..."

Impatient, I step out of the immediate path. Her gun is shaking badly. "I think you were off by a hair." I'm already sitting, tapping the 'enter' key, when I hear the second shot. Deathstroke stops gurgling.

"You better not screw with me! I'm not stupid!"

I watch the walls come alive, lead panels rotating to reveal kryptonite bars all the way from the floor to the ceiling. Powerful red hued lights kick on overhead and within seconds, the bats swarm away from the searing light. We only have a few minutes before we're toast. Rose covers her eyes, ducking against the sudden heat, missing the yellow blur.

A head bounces on the ground, shoulder length black hair matted with slime, producing a surprisingly hollow sound. Dick is still wearing his new mask, a red and black half hood and it makes me think of orioles. I remember an angry little boy, determined to keep his master's attention from me.

Marco is studying this new body part with bemusement, knowing nothing about Professor Zoom or the Flash. I know when Rose notices because I hear the gasp and the start of a howl. In the rising heat, electronics whine to life. I look over my shoulder, from the chair, as Rose examines the Cave frantically, then changes tack to grab Nightwing's head and collapse on her knees beside her father.

The Cave's automated defense system is back on-line and her face creases into a snarl, tears glimmering in the red and green light. "You're insane!" She raises the gun to her temple, eyes boring through me, and falls down in a back-spray before the lasers arc through her abandoned space.

For the last time, Batman protects me as a red and blue blur streaks furiously into the Cave, unsure of his target beyond so much lead-lining. He's traveling at several hundred miles per hour and now it's too late to stop. The lights and radiation hit him and he keeps going until the sudden, messy stop against the far wall. _Bruce, you magnificent bastard._ I wonder if anyone thought to cross-examine his claim that a ton of kryptonite had gone missing without a trace.

In the resulting near silence, I listen to the soft _tink_ and _plop_ of liquid draining from the stalactites. It echoes faintly and I can smell burnt wires, burnt meat and burnt ozone. I lean forward to toggle the release switch and poison gas fills the side vault. I force myself to check the view-screen and see Light screaming at the door, and a human being huddled in the far corner.

"It is finished?" asks Marco.

"Yes. Tell the others they will obey me or die."

He goes to one knee and some feeling crawls across my shoulders as he kisses the ancient Roman ring that makes me Il Capo di tutte le famiglie. I've had it for so long, packed away in a safety deposit box, earned at such a price. "Si, Donna Falconé."

"Meet me."

Marco scuttles up the stairs where he will find Alfred, then drive into the City to wait for me. I'm sure he understands the risk of being followed, the risk he takes for me.

I type into the nearly defunct computer one last time. I wait over the catacombs, obeying the first rule of a master thief, passed down to me by James Stark, given to him by his master: take no credit by leaving no trace. I watch the timer set on my wrist unit and jump when the heat signature of the self-destruct explosion envelopes my own.


End file.
